Saturday, March 5, 2011

Weekend Open Thread: With Extra Crab

I was hoping we could have posted the minor league spring training roster by now, since pitchers and catchers already reported yesterday. It's fun every year to look over the roster and try to spot which guys aren't listed, sort of a game to see who can find the most missing players. But no such luck so far.

Maybe I'm just crabby from no baseball and the long winter, but I'm getting a little tired of the Rays keeping everything a national secret. If Jim hadn't reverse-engineered the minor league spring training game schedule (over two weeks ago!) we still wouldn't have it. Not exactly helpful for family and friends of the players (and fans too) who want to schedule trips to see minor league spring training.

Okay, so I am a little crabby. But still, I'm not asking for an exclusive or anything, post it on MiLB or give it to DRaysBay or RaysIndex or Stacy Long... or anybody. Just get the information out there for the folks who care about it, the fans of the teams. Enough of my whining.

I'm looking forward to reading Kevin's RaysProspects 2011 Prospect Guide, which is scheduled to be available for free download on Monday. The Guide is by far the biggest project ever undertaken at RP, and all of the credit goes to Kevin.

I did start a new site for non-Rays-related baseball posts called Triple Play Depth. Everything about the Rays will still be posted here, but I wanted somewhere to write about baseball topics that really didn't fit at RP. I'm just getting started, but let me know what you think of it so far. And as always, have a great weekend!

Are all the organizations as secretive as the the Rays as far as information in concerned? Also, with "star" players leaving games early, it's nearly impossible for fans to have any contact with them. Which teams allow fans to meet, chat, take pictures, get autographs of the players?

Just to clarify, at this point there is only one roster, all of the minor leaguers. When games start players go with the various teams, AAA, AA, A+ and A. Once the MLB ST roster starts getting cut down, guys who were on MLB usually play with AAA, guys who were playing on AAA drop to AA, and so on. Don't think that just because a player begins playing ST games with AAA that they are likely to end up on the Bulls roster to start the season, most move down a level as MLB reduces their ST roster. Opening day rosters won't be released until a couple days before the season starts.

I just want the initial minor league spring training roster so we can look for any missing players. Hopefully we'll get it soon.